The waking of mom

Mom was an Irish woman who stood 4 feet 11 inches and had seven kids.Her life was more colourful than most and this book serves to give an insight into a family of Irish Immigrants who grew up in the time of the troubles.1960 onwards

Submitted:Feb 20, 2013
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Chapter one

It was raining, you know that soft rain that occurs in the early
summer

when it is too warm to dress appropriately.As we, [my brother
David and

Tom ] arrived at moms house, we could easily get a sense of
the

solemnity and the anticipation of what was to become the
most

significant event of all of our lives.

Abbeyfield Rd, the place my family and I began our real lives in
England after a series of moves beginning with the Ferry trip
from dear old Eire.The only thing I

recall about that trip was the sky, probably because I was laying
down

in a pram during it or maybe the visual is one that I can only
conjure

up in my mind because I was too young to have learned any way
of

communicating other than to bawl or look with a pleading panic
in my

eyes.Who knows what the real memory is but I like the sky to
this

day.

There were some very familiar faces gathered around moms
front

door that sullen,dreary morning, I recognised all of them but at
the same time could not accurately place names on many of them,
some of them were my brothers, my

sister, some uncles and aunts ,some friends of moms and others,
well maybe they were just here for the spectacle.

"I have to go in and see Paul and Noel "I said to David because
on this visit I had not yet seen them

I live in the USA you see and I was not really
planning to come

over till the autumn when I could cobble the funds together, but
true

to her style, mom was not going to wait for me to make the
decision she

just went up and died without any consideration for my financial
well

being. 'My jesus' I thought [or did I say it out loud} when I saw
Paul he

looked old and tired like a man who has tried to make it
all

worthwhile and had given up trying,"you look good"I lied
,"how're

things"? I ventured, wondering what had caused such resignation
in his

face.He lit a cigarette, "Allright" he said as if not interested
enough

in the question to provide an exciting answer.

I hug, my family are less comfortable at it but I do attack hugs
so their choice is limited, a nervous pat on the pack usually
ensues when I launch myself on

them, Paul had an indifferent hug but a hug nontheless. He used
to be

the good looking one, the one who women would gravitate towards
and

leave us in his dust trail. Paul was the baby that Mom, [for some
reason

known only to herself and my dad]left behind in Ireland whilst
moving

to England on a Job scouting extraveganza carrying me in her
womb.It

must not have worked out so well that time because she came back
after

around a year with me not having yet been born. On reflection I
must

have been concieved in Jolly old and she must have decided I
needed to

be an Irishman because that is where I came into this world. I
remember

Paul being the slower of the bunch and Lazy to the point where
he

couldn't even be bothered to walk or talk till well after the age
of 2

years.We had a lot of fun as toddlers with him though,he was
easy, a

very peaceable young chap with not a mean bone in his body so as
we

grew up he would become the butt of our not so
peaceable

targeting'.Palouka ',mom called him,I never understood her
nicknames for

us but she had them and they were clearer in her mind than were
our

actual names, Mine changed over the years.from curly top to
flute

amooney and finally on to the wandering hippy. Pauls front teeth
were

missing,he had had a triple bypass three years ago and had
also

developed eplipsy which caused him to fall over when a siezure
struck

,this was how he had lost his teeth,hitting hard things as he
crashed

unceremoniously to the ground.It made him look that much older
but he

still had the sad but kind eyes of my slightly older
brother.Shuffling

from room to room in the house with its nicotine stained walls
and the

living room as if suspended in aspic,the way it had been for
the

thirty years since I left. Mom had taken to living in one room
where

the tele was on 24/7 and her ashtray was always just a flick
away,the

kitchen had the same look about it but had been more
recently

decorated so was brighter than the yellow walls of the
living

room.Funny how that term Living room becomes an oxymoron after
the

death.The rain persisted and it was still an hour away from the
time

the funeral cars would come to take us all to her
final

performance. Paul,as a young child had a magnificent head of
Jet

black,straight hair that resembled a helmet {which is maybe where
the

nickname Palouka came from} He had a sense of Humour right from
the

beginning and it served him well in his early life.One of the
memories

I have of him is when an old cabbage faced nun came into my class
{we

were in a catholic school} and singled me out to clean up the
green

phlegm that my slightly older brother had expelled onto the floor
in

the corridor of the school.She explained that though he had done
it he

wasn't prepared to clean it up so she would make an example of
him by

summoning his younger brother to do his duty.God knows where
the

logic arrived in her mind to incorporate this as discipline but
she had

me do it anyway.I had a very brief thought to defy her too but my
fear

of the nuns was greater at that time than my sense of fairness.I
was

provided with a mop and did what I was ordered to do,afterwards
the

nun [Sister Marie was her name} let Paul know in no uncertain
terms that

I was the good boy in this family and he was basically destined
for

hell or at the very least purgatory. Paul knew no such fear of
the nuns

and smirked when he saw I had been made to clean up after him.I
would

one day wreak my revenge on both the nun and my brother,I didn't
know

how yet but at least one of them was going to suffer a
painful

demise.My time in St chads was marked by many offenses like this
but

of all of them Pauls greeny stuck out the clearest. My first day
at St chads I

remember like it was yesterday,The whole of the new contingent of
1st

year pupils were gathered expectantly in the Hall waiting
for

instructions on how to begin our lives there.I noticed the hall
floor

had been polished to a glasslike state and in my infant mind
thought

how brilliant a sliding surface it would make so I launched
myself

into a sprint from which I then dived onto the floor belly first.
It

worked like a charm I hit the ground Like a puck on a shuffle
board

sailing towards the now gathering nuns, I was unable to stop.When
I

finally came to a halt it just happened to be right underneath
sister

maries habit.The shocked silence in the hallway was palpable and
to

this day I can still hear the gasps as I slid to a slow and
very

delicate stall underneath her habit.

I had become used to being dragged by the hair at this point
since it

was the preferred method of rage display that my mother had made
a

practice of,but this was different because I was in the beached
whale

position and that meant I had to be dragged to an upright
stance,I

remember it hurt a lot but I also remember thinking God wouldnt
do

this to one of his children,I think it was the beginning of
my

atheism. My first day at St Chads was spent standing in the
Hallway

outside of Sister Maries office.I never looked up when I
was

underneath the habit so I still to this day don't know if nuns
wear

Knickers.

CHAPTER2

David wants me to play the tin whistle on the procession in front
of

the funeral cars,He says "she always called you flute amooney and
it

would be what she would have liked",the trouble is I have not
brought a

whistle with me,we found a music store up the road from where
moms

house is ,so I purchased one for 3 pounds fifty,'cheap'
I

thought, though they are called penny whistles so they should
cost a

penny,I wonder if that could be deemed false advertising in this
day

of rampant lawsuits over silly things.We arrive back, the rains
have

increased,forty minutes before the funeral, the crowd has
increased,

Richard is there with his wife Diane. Richard is the oldest
brother and

he has been MIA since dad died 25 years ago.he always had
resentment

for my mom and had not been around to watch her swift demise
since she

developed c.o.p.d from the chainsmoking, my mom loved her
fags,she

stubbornley refused to give them up even after the
diagnosis,her

reasoning being, the damage is done and would not be undone by
stopping

now. There is very little logic to the self abuse some people
hold onto

during their lives and this one simply had no root in
reason.

Richard walked up to me and gave me a hug,he had mad eyes,the
kind you see in

a psychopath just before they switch off and cause immeasurable
damage

in their altered state. I had spent the first part of my visit
with him

down south in Somerset where he lives.He had called David [whose
house